Good morning! Matt and I made it to Crossfit Dupont last night and I’m so glad we did — one of my favorite workouts yet! It was HARD but engaging.
My favorite thing about working out is that it’s my time to recharge, zone out, and just focus on the task at hand. To be honest, I’ve been feeling really overwhelmed lately with everything that I have on my plate. Between a full time internship (+ nearly an hour commute each way by car even though it’s only like 7 miles… so brutal), grad school, starting to work on my masters paper, part time blogging, AND wedding planning, I kind of feel like my head might explode. I’m basically going a million miles a minute every second of the day and it’s really starting to catch up with me, especially since I’ve been traveling on most of the weekends which would normally be a good time for me to get caught up on work. But even though I’ve been so busy, I’m still fitting in exercise of some form every day because it’s such good stress relief! It’s truly my “me” time — even if I don’t feel like I’m in the mood to work out, I’m always so glad when I get moving and without fail I feel much more relaxed afterward.
Last night at Crossfit was a great de-stressing workout — it was intense, required focus, and had me completely distracted from everything that’s piling up on my to-do list and stressing me out right now. Perfect!
The instructors split us up into two groups — guys and girls. The girls started first with the more intense workout of the evening! Here’s what we had on the docket:
Perform 4 Rounds of the following:
- 1 Minute Push Presses (I used 40 pounds)
- 1 Minute Box Jumps
- 1 Minute Clean Pull — (I used the same 40 lbs)
- 1 Minute Bear Crawls
- *Rest 1 Minute between rounds
This workout didn’t sound so crazy on the website but man was it killer. We were all sweating buckets when we finished! Crossfit is great because it’s so scalable — everyone used different weights on their bars for the push presses and clean jerks. My partner and I definitely had the lightest of the group — no shame. 🙂
After the 4 rounds were complete, we swapped with the guys and headed over for our strength workout, which was bench presses! I actually don’t think I’ve ever done legit bench presses before, so it was fun to feel hardcore. I was working with a nice, supportive group of girls, too, so that was fun. There were 4 of us and we all took turns spotting/cheering each other on and gradually going up in weight until we each reached our 5 rep max. For me, that was 52 pounds. I made it up to 62 but it was a bit much so I dropped back down. It’s important to check your ego at Crossfit — no point in hurting yourself!
Last night was also fun because I got to try out some new kicks! Reebok sent me these RealFlex Crossfit Nano shoes to try out and I LOVED them. Supportive and stable feeling but inspired by barefoot technology so they are nice and close to the ground. Very lightweight, too! And cute — I love the colors.
These shoes also feature Reebok’s “U-Form” technology, which is a heat activated custom-fit technology built into the lining of some of their newer shoes. Remember when I learned about that when I was at Reebok’s headquarters in May? With U-Form, consumers use a hair dryer to heat their shoes for two minutes, which causes the shoes to soften; you then put on the shoes and wait a few minutes for them to harden perfectly molded to your feet! Cool, huh?
No big deal, just blow drying my shoes.
Anyway — such an awesome workout. My arms are definitely sore today after all that. But good sore. 🙂
What are your best tips for managing stress? Do you use exercise to de-stress like I do? A glass or two of wine is another favorite stress relief approach of mine, as is chatting with a best friend!
